


An Organism in Detail

by CancerianWastelandCat



Series: [ VENOM ] [6]
Category: the GazettE
Genre: AU History, AU explanation, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Hybrids, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 15:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17226455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CancerianWastelandCat/pseuds/CancerianWastelandCat
Summary: Kouyou is sent to class, though it ends up a special one.





	An Organism in Detail

**Author's Note:**

> I'm the worst at updating. I'm really sorry it took me a whole fucking year, I'm so embarrassed. Honestly. But like, it's here now! And I have to say I initially had a looot more planned for this chapter but then, once I realized I was at 13 pages already, I decided to cut the end (toacliffhangerdonthateme) and leave this chapter as a sort of "history class" you guys are taking with Kou here, haha. I'm hoping that the few things I did explain aren't too confusing... Anyways, enjoy!

As expected, Kouyou woke up alone. Peeking his head out from underneath the blanket, Yuu’s neatly folded one was the first thing he laid eyes on. They wandered around the room as he turned onto his back, taking in the furniture. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them the day before but now that he’d spent his first night here, things felt … different. More real and also more serious.

It was cool in the room, unsurprisingly seeing how Eternals didn’t really need heaters, and the warmth Kouyou had snuggled into dissipated quickly once he sat up and pushed the blanket down. Yuu had drawn open the dark blue curtains before the two large windows on either side of the bed, one of them slightly ajar and allowing an even cooler breeze to rush inside. 

Kouyou shivered. He’d almost hoped he would wake up next to Yuu, that Yuu would maybe stay with him for his first morning in his new home but he was too well aware that the prince didn’t function this way. He wasn’t going to adapt to anyone.

Uttering a sigh, Kouyou shoved the duvet off his legs entirely and got up, closing the window first thing. Only briefly did his gaze jump outside and across the vast gardens that seemed to stretch for miles, touching the horizon where a bright glowing ball of Orange pushed its way up. How early was it?

Kouyou ruffled a hand through his hair, yawning widely before he toddled around the bed and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. The screen was greeting him with two unpleasant messages. One was the time, 5:58 AM, the other was Takanori’s brimming chat window. They made Kouyou snort while he scrolled through them briefly. Why did it seem like his friend was more excited for his new life than he was himself? Though, judging from the most recent message from _just two minutes ago_ , Takanori appeared to be excited for one particular thing and one thing only.

Taka, 5:56am  
_Kouyou I’m expecting a belated but fully detailed!! live report!! once you’re up!! Also I really don’t feel like stumbling across Mr.Tall-Bright-And-Glasses so if your new royal ass finds the time, SAVE ME ˛˛૧(˵¯͒▱¯͒˵)_

Kouyou sighed. He wanted to believe that Takanori took his little problem as lightly as he wanted to make it seem but after three years of friendship, Kouyou had learned to read between the lines. His new relationship was Takanori’s perfect excuse to ignore his own misery that he was trapped in. Ironically enough, for all the advice he had for Kouyou, he obviously lacked the ability to follow it himself.

“You’d think you- “

A sudden knock interrupted his thinking-out-loud and he twirled around to stare at the door that separated him from the living area, eyebrows lifted. He’d completely forgotten that there were still other people around.

“Yes?” he called out and narrowed his eyes when, even after a solid two minutes, there was no response. It took another ten seconds until Kouyou remembered why that was. Right. No one else but Yuu and him were allowed in here. So just a knock to wake him up? They didn’t… say anything? The thought made him frown. There were still so many things he had to get used to.   
For now though, his grumbling stomach reminded him of the more important task at hand.   
Dialling his friend’s phone number with one hand, Kouyou grabbed the handle of the heavy oak door with the other, though he didn’t get to actually slide it open. Takanori picked up his call so quickly Kouyou was convinced he’d just been waiting in front of the screen ever since sending his text.

“Did you do the do?” he asked with a voice so serious it was comical. Still, Kouyou cringed.

“Good morning to you too, Taka.”

A groan came from the other end of the line.

“Come on, I take it you read my texts. So? Did you? I want to know everything. Was he as good as the last time? I mean it’s not like you remember much but- “

“We didn’t.”

Kouyou decided to just cut to the chase. This early in the morning, he could honestly do without Takanori’s pestering. Of course he had no bad intentions at all, however, Kouyou didn’t exactly feel like calling last night’s events into his memory, not if he could avoid it. And that included keeping the little things Yuu and him _had_ done to himself for now. Rejection was rejection after all, and it hurt.

As he finally slid the door open, Takanori groaned, clearly in disappointment.

“Aww man. I was so sure he was going to… You didn’t even- “  
  
“No,” Kouyou interrupted him again, a little firmer this time, “Listen Taka, I’ll call you back later or drop by the lab, okay? See you.”  
  
And he hung up despite Takanori’s complaints before allowing his gaze to stroll. There, on the glass dining table, stood several small plates and bowls that he assumed assembled his breakfast. Was this just for him?

_That’s a bit of a dumb question_ , Kouyou thought. He was the only one around, of course it had to be for him.

He approached it cautiously. Right next to the food lay a small piece of paper and the scrawly elegant handwriting on it caught his attention a lot quicker than the undoubtedly delicious meal.

 

> _Your classes start 7:30. Westwing 2-B. Don’t be late._

 

Kouyou blinked. He didn’t know what he had expected. He had to attend classes? Obviously he had to learn, that much was clear, and he _wanted_ to know more about his mother’s legacy but for him to be put in a random class… with classmates most of which probably already knew about him and who he was by now… The notion didn’t seem very appealing.  
Or at least not as appealing as the breakfast before him, as his stomach now reminded him with another audible growl.

Clearing his throat, Kouyou sat down and devoured majority of the food, his eating speed increasing with every bite he took. It was unlike anything he had ever tasted before, every flavor meticulously defined yet melting with the ones surrounding it into a tiny explosion that caressed his taste buds. Quite an experience indeed.

After he was done, he collected the dishes and got up but his plan of carrying them into the open kitchen was very quickly nullified. Out of nowhere, a maid came rushing up to his side, startling Kouyou into a wince. She divested him of the bowls with a polite smile. Where the hell had she come from?

“Thank you,” he managed to say quickly and in an attempt to show his good manners but she didn’t say a word. Kouyou frowned, wondering if that was just part of the etiquette as well. His eyes followed as she made her way to the marble worktop and began to sort everything into the dishwasher.

“Are you guys not allowed to talk?” he asked randomly but regretted it instantly when the woman visibly flinched. Turning around to face him - well, not to face seeing as she was bowing to Kouyou - she shook her head and Kouyou’s expression morphed into a dumbfounded grimace.

“At all?”

Another headshake.

“Hm. No wonder Yuu lacks conversation skills when no one talks to him around here- ” he stopped, “I mean, um, his … his Highness. Of course.”

Upon raising her head, Kouyou thought he could see her lips twitch into something a little broader of a smile but it was all gone in the blink of an eye. Right, because she was a professional and Kouyou was like the bull in a china shop. He probably wasn’t even supposed to talk to them.

“Okay, I’m just going to…” Kouyou pointed back towards the bedroom with a tight-lipped smile of his own, “I’m gonna get ready. Er, thank you. For the nice breakfast.”

She nodded once more and Kouyou turned on his heels, disappearing into the bedroom and closing the door behind him as swiftly as he could.

* * *

His attempt to shower as fast as possible was gravely disturbed by the sheer amount of luxury he found himself surrounded by. Kouyou couldn't even count the amount of nozzles in the shower (there even were some in the walls!), the lotions and shampoos inside were of the highest quality brands and the black tiles were comfortably warm beneath his feet. Damn, this bathroom alone was twice as big as the entire apartment he used to live in with his father years ago. Getting himself ready and at least presentable almost took him an hour, a good part of it spent with trying to work through the control panel.

“Who even needs that much technology  _ in the shower _ ,” Kouyou muttered to himself once he closed the last button on his uniform. His  _ new  _ uniform at that. Standing in front of the floor-length mirror, he ran his hands down the front. The black material was soft yet sturdy beneath his fingertips, prove that even their uniforms differed from the other students’ in terms of quality, and the gold buttons held the jacket tightly nestled around his waist. Two of them even adorned the front of each of his sleeves. 

_ You look very official, _ the voice in his head whispered to him,  _ maybe adjust your tie a little, though. _

Kouyou sighed, straightening his back. After tugging around at his tie for a bit and deciding he couldn’t make it look any better than it already did, he reached for the black school bag he’d found standing beneath the uniform, in his side of the closet. For a moment there, he was tempted to risk a glance into Yuu’s side but even that ended up feeling too much like an intrusion.

He had no time for such delay anyway. A glance to this phone told him he was running late, _quite_ late, so he hurried out of the apartment - no signs of the maid still being around - and down the elevator. Its golden sheen and the sight of the patterns on its walls had a lot less effect on him, as Kouyou noticed. The last time he’d stood in this thing alone he’d felt close to suffocating out of nervousness. Now, he still felt nervous as hell, but the little bit of excitement mixed into it made it more bearable. In the end, once he’d stepped out of the elevator and was making his way through the crowded hallways, Kouyou even caught himself smiling. Most of the students bumping against him left and right weren’t even giving him any attention. The closer he came to the west wing however, the more people scattered apart. Kouyou began looking around. Just like in the rest of the academy, the walls seemed dipped in blinding white, the ceiling way too high for his half-human eyes to really recognize the stuc decorations on it properly. The classroom doors had to be at least two times taller than him, though. Next to each of them, a small silver plate was mounted to the wall, the class name written on it. Kouyou read them all, but 2-B was nowhere to be found. He groaned under his breath. How difficult could it be to find a classroom? And why weren’t they numbered in order? After scurrying past 5-A and 8-C for the third time, Kouyou’s palms really began to sweat. This couldn’t be happening. What kind of impression was it going to leave if he was late on his first day? He could already here Yuu giving him “the talk”, how it was never going to work out if he didn’t even manage to get to class in time and that he was a disappointment and that he better just move out again- 

“Kouyou?” 

Kouyou almost whimpered upon hearing his name. There he was. He’d found him already. Face scrunched into a grimace, he turned around, holding on tightly to the strap of his bag, only to be met with a face that definitely wasn’t Yuu’s. His chest fell in relief. God, he really had to calm down. 

“Yes?” he said in response, giving the man before him a quick one-over. He was wearing the same black uniform as him, only that the man’s had a single, broad strip of gold going down from collar to rim. His face seemed vaguely familiar, if only for the scar that cut his right eyebrow in two just before the tail.

“You can come with me,” he said and extended his arm back towards the corridor Kouyou had come from. Wait, what? So he wasn’t supposed to go to class after all? This entire endeavour was getting more and more confusing by the second. Apparently they really couldn’t decide on what to do with him.

“I, um, I’m sorry but I actually have to go to- “   
  
“A class, I know,” the man interrupted, “But don’t worry, I personally excused you for the next three hours so you’ll be fine.”   
  
Kouyou’s eyes narrowed at that. Three hours? As much as he tried, he couldn’t spontaneously think of anything this stranger could want from him for three hours that  _ didn’t  _ end with him dead behind some sketchy bar; covering up the dirty secret that was his hybridness.

“Thank you for the offer, but I really need to get going. It’s my first day and this course is pretty important and it’s starting-,” Kouyou checked his phone and his expression fell like an anchor off a ship, “-right now.”

Great. This was great. Huffing out a breath, Kouyou truly began to wonder why he had even gotten up this morning. Clearly something was wrong with today. First Takanori caring more about his sex life than his well-being, then his embarrassing encounter with that maid and now this? Kouyou’s shoulders sacked. All he wanted right now was to crawl back under his blanket and maybe wake up having  _ all of this _ undone. 

“Like I said,” the man before him spoke up again and prompted Kouyou into looking back up from where he’d been staring into the void. He’d almost forgotten about him.

“I checked in with your teacher and it’s fine for you not to attend today. We’re all aware that none of this is easy for you, Kouyou.” 

“Excuse me, but _who_ exactly are you again?”

The question burst out of him quicker than he could stop it and it sounded way more snappish than intended. But wasn’t it justified? Who  _ was  _ this guy? He would probably have to apologize for that later but Kouyou did want to tell him that  _ damn right _ , none of this was easy, especially when there was nobody giving him a hand. However, the man began to chuckle at his sassy remark and something about witnessing that silenced Kouyou into a mere frown. Whoever this man was, Kouyou wasn’t so sure as to whether he was keen on meeting him ever again. 

“My name is Suzuki Akira, I’m the prince’s history professor.”

Oh yeah. Of fucking course he was.

“Oh.”

* * *

 

Suzuki didn’t appear to mind any of his clumsiness. He simply laughed it off, as if Kouyou  _ hadn’t  _ just acted like a complete fool, and refrained to explaining himself once again. This time, Kouyou didn’t object. The notion of having a “private class” with one of Yuu’s personal professors didn’t strike him as intimidating as having to sit in a room full of silently judging students. At least upon first thought it didn’t. 

Shouldering his bag, Kouyou followed the professor. He began to wonder as to why they had changed the plan at such short notice, or if maybe Suzuki had just decided by himself that it was better this way. Maybe, just maybe, Kouyou would even get to find out a little more about Yuu himself. Provided Suzuki had been teaching him since early childhood, which was likely, surely they had a more personal relationship. 

Suzuki didn’t start talking again until they had entered what Kouyou assumed was the staff wing. The doors here certainly were smaller than those of the classrooms, and of darker wood, too. 

“I’m sure you’re pretty overwhelmed by what’s been happening lately, aren’t you?” he asked with a friendly smile, fishing a key card out of the pocket of his uniform jacket. Kouyou almost scoffed in response. 

“If you mean overwhelmed as in  _ being poisoned by someone who doesn’t care about me and moving out two weeks later only to be looked at like I’m a slut _ then yes, I am a little bit overwhelmed.” 

They stopped in front of a simple black door, Suzuki’s forehead captured in a frown as he tapped the card against a small sensor and pushed the door open.

“His Highness does care about you, Kouyou.” 

“He has a weird way of showing that.” 

“He is- Well, why don’t you come in first of all. Take a seat.” 

Kouyou lifted a brow at the unfinished sentence and lifted it even higher once he lay eyes upon the inside of Suzuki’s office. Had he just stepped into a different dimension? Because the huge posters of goat-legged men and stars in all different shapes and forms on the walls as well as the black shelves filled with an uncountable amount of antique-looking…  _ things  _ certainly didn’t give the image of a regular workplace. 

“What did you say you’re teaching?” 

Looking up from where he’d been picking up some document from his desk, Suzuki followed Kouyou’s wide-eyed gaze around the room.

“Oh, history and occultism.” 

“Ah.” 

_ That explains it.  _

Clearing his throat, Kouyou finally took a step towards the professor and sat down on the only chair there was and placed his bag next to his feet on the floor. He still didn’t know what to think of this. 

“Right, so,” Suzuki began right then and took his seat opposite Kouyou, “the reason I asked you to come with me is that, frankly said, I think putting you in a random class for the mere sake of making you feel integrated is a terrible idea. And it’s the middle of the school year so there’s quite a bit of material you would’ve had to catch up on prior, too.” 

Kouyou bit down on the inside of his cheek. Making him feel integrated? If that had really been the plan, Kouyou wanted to laugh at the sorry attempt of it. If anything, he felt like he had been thrown in at the deep end. 

“Yeah, if there’s one thing I don’t feel it’s integrated.” 

Suzuki laughed again, nodding.

“I can imagine that,” he said, “Hence, why I decided to take you out of that class, for now, until all your questions are answered. Which I’m sure there are a lot of.” 

“And that’s okay? Just like that?”

Another nod, a silent one, paired with a reassuring smile was sent his way. Kouyou exhaled a huff of breath and leaned back in his chair. It was true, he did have a lot of questions. What other chance did he have anyway? Leaving now only to return back to a class he wasn’t even expected in anymore wasn’t an option. Weighing his urge to get those questions answered against whether or not Suzuki was trustworthy only took him a moment. 

“Fine, then…,” he began, kneading his fingers in his lap while trying to sort through the myriads of thoughts in his head. It was probably best to start easy. 

“What exactly are Eternals?”

Suzuki hummed in a way that sounded like he’d presumed this particular question. 

“To put it simply,” he said and turned in his swivel chair to retrieve a book from the shelf behind him, “we’re higher developed vampires. The elaborate explanation is a bit more complicated.” 

When he opened the book to its last few pages, Kouyou couldn’t help but lean closer. The old, crinkly paper showed the outline of a person’s body with veins drawn inside of it. Small x-like marks seemed randomly distributed all over it, some on its arms, two on its throat and a couple spread down over stomach and legs. Kouyou had no idea what they were supposed to represent, nor was he able to read the texts next to the figure. This was a completely different language. Before he could ask about its origin or meaning though, Suzuki continued. 

“Basically, we originate from a row of experiments. A couple thousand years ago, when the vampire population was on a dramatic rise, humans decided that they had become more of a threat than anything else and that co-existing wasn’t possible any longer. So they began to hunt the vampires, like they did a lot of other species but I’ll come back to that later. They hunted them, imprisoned them in cages and, because they knew that weakened vampires were incapable of fighting back, they left them to die of thirst and then impaled them or set them on fire. But among the group of people organizing the hunt, there was a man- ”

“The mad scientist.” 

Suzuki chuckled briefly. 

“Pretty much, yeah. He didn’t seem very keen on killing the vampires, quite the contrary. He was … obsessed with them. Obsessed with the idea of immortality, obsessed with the idea of staying young, of healing now matter the severity of a wound. So what he did was he kidnapped one of the vampires they were holding captive, a young man maybe twenty-five years of age,” Kouyou’s eyes widened at that, “and he put him into an artificial coma. And here’s where the crazy part starts.”

Kouyou scoffed inwardly, all of this sounded  _ pretty  _ crazy to him already, but he didn’t dare interrupt the professor. In fact, Kouyou’s eyes were glued to his lips and every word that left them. 

“These spots here,” Suzuki pointed at all the small Xs on the drawing, “mark where he injected DNA into the guy, and it was a lot of DNA from a lot of different species. Sprites, angels, sirens- ”

And that was the point that threw Kouyou out of the loop for the first time. 

“Wait,  _ what?” _

Suzuki looked up. His eyebrows lifted and he seemed surprised at Kouyou’s obvious lack of knowledge. 

“You don’t know these exist?” 

Kouyou laughed nervously, numbly, as he shook his head. “N-No?”   
  
Sprites? Sirens?  _ Angels? _ What on earth was he talking about? Were these creatures even  _ from  _ earth? Why had he never … why had he never been taught about this? It wasn’t like he’d never went to school… 

“Well,” the professor licked his lips, “they’re barely still around. Angels went extinct fifteen years ago after humans hunted them for their feathers. Sprites live pretty secluded anyway. But all of that is a topic for sometime else. Let’s continue.”

“Wait wait wait,” Kouyou interrupted him quickly, hand raised half-heartedly, “can we cut the history for a moment?” 

Hearing that, Suzuki leaned back in his chair. With his hands atop his stomach like that, the professor looked mighty comfortable which was more than Kouyou could say of himself. There were still so many questions whirring every which way inside his head. 

“Do you … Do you still drink blood?” 

Suzuki’s chest rose with an intake of breath. 

“We don’t have to,” he shook his head, “It’s not necessary for our survival. But we can choose to.” 

“Like when you poison someone?” 

“For example.”

Kouyou’s gaze wandered off to the side. And as much as he wanted to prevent it, so did his thoughts. So Yuu had not only infected him with his venom that night, he had fed off him, too. Perhaps that explained the dizziness he had felt upon leaving the bed. It hadn’t just come from the alcohol. Not for the first time since that night two weeks ago, Kouyou began to wonder  _ why. _ It was the simplest of all questions, yet it seemed like the hardest to answer. Yuu had made it clear that he didn’t reciprocate any of Kouyou’s feelings. Then why,  _ why, _ had he decided to do what he’d done? What had driven him to bury his teeth into Kouyou’s neck? To compensate for the pain of it with a smooth press of his body, to drape the blanket over Kouyou while the venom lulled him into unconsciousness? Why all of that when there was  _ nothing  _ on his end to begin with? Kouyou could not not ask. 

“How do you know?” he said and looked back up at the professor, “how do you know who…?”

“Instinct,” Suzuki replied as if that was just another one of those questions he’d seen coming. He sat up straight and closed the book that still lay between them before pushing it across the table. 

“Take it with you,” he smiled, “consider it an evening read. There’s a chapter on poisoning as well. But Kouyou- “

Kouyou’s hand stopped midway to reaching for the book. A certain sobriety had returned to Suzuki’s glance, making him hesitate. With his arms propped on the table, Suzuki leaned in closer and as he did so, Kouyou noticed the braids for the first time. The delicate, narrow plaits reached from his temples to the back of his head, blending in almost seamlessly with the rest of his blue-black hair and the elegance of it formed a startling contrast with the scar over his eyebrow; the kind of contrast that made you blink once or twice once you noticed.    
It was only when Kouyou finally brought himself to grab the ancient-looking book that the professor continued.

“You have to understand that we don’t choose randomly. In fact, we don’t choose at all. The connection between an Eternal and their _Ateor_ , the person they infect, is predestined. Always. But that doesn’t mean we know _when_ it’s going to happen. We have an inkling usually, but no control over it. Do you really think anyone would have allowed the prince to go to that party you met? He went because something was telling him he had to. An Eternal and their Ateor are very much like magnets and it doesn’t matter how big the distance between them is. Every single move they make in life is designed to lead them to one another. The moment he laid eyes on you, _he just knew._ And so did you. You might be half human but you’re also half Eternal, don’t forget that. You’ve already felt this connection to him, haven’t you?”

Kouyou gulped into the awaiting silence that followed. He didn’t even have to think about that, didn’t even have to wonder. Yuu’s touch from the night before was still lingering on his skin, like a feather on his cheek, a shiver on his ribcage, on his thighs and his lips. Oh, his lips…

_ You can feel it, right? That’s me. I’m in your blood now. _

Heat fought its way up into Kouyou’s face. Reminiscing over the conversation they had had wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he knew, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t mentally go over each and every word Yuu had said in the attempt to find something, anything, that would make more sense with the knowledge he had now. 

_ There’s so many things you still don’t know. _

_ The council hasn’t decided yet.  _

_ You were pretty tempting and I was drunk. _

He couldn’t find any. Suzuki sighed softly, his facial expression speaking of some inner turmoil the source of which Kouyou couldn’t decipher. However, once he raised his voice again, Kouyou did manage to force himself into blinking away the memories.

“The prince- ” the professor began, then faltered before choosing a different approach, “We poison once in our lifetime, Kouyou, that’s why it’s nothing we take lightly. The prince is under immense pressure, for a variety of reasons that I’m not in the place to tell you about but what I’m trying to say is- ”

**_BOOM BOOM BOOM_ **

The sudden banging of fists against the door interrupted Suzuki in his speech, a loud voice yelling from the other side. 

_ “ _ Suzuki-san! _ Suzuki-san!”  _

Kouyou jolted up in his chair, forehead captured in a frown.

“Suzuki-san, are you there?!”

“Yes for God’s sake, what is it?” Suzuki exclaimed and got up from his desk when the door already flew open. 

There was a young man standing in the doorway, not much younger than him, clad in an all blue uniform. Kouyou was only more confused but he recognized the shape of the golden pin attached to his heaving chest. A messenger?

“I-I was sent because- They told me the Ateor was w-with you and we need- ”

An unsettling shiver ran down Kouyou’s spine. He remembered enough to understand that the man was referring to him. Suzuki was getting equally as much and he cast a quick glance into Kouyou’s direction before stepping up to the messenger.

“Okay calm down, tell me what happened,” he spoke reassuringly but from his posture alone Kouyou could tell something was wrong. Why were they sending someone for him?

The messenger sucked in a short breath, his eyes flying back and forth between the professor and Kouyou. 

“We received notice from the clinic a … a few minutes ago that- th-that- ”

“That what?”

“Her Majesty has,” the man gulped, “has passed.”

All color left Suzuki’s face. He stared at the messenger like he’d seen a ghost. His pale lips barely parted for the faint whisper that left him.

_ “What?” _

Kouyou couldn’t sit still any longer at this point. After reaching down to shove the professor’s book into his school bag, he pushed his chair back and stood up. What was going on? Her Majesty had passed? What did that mean? Was Her Majesty who Kouyou  _ thought  _ she was? 

“Who? Who has passed away?” he urged and didn’t even notice that he’d grabbed Suzuki by his arm, that he was shaking him, “Suzuki-san!”

The professor winced out of his shock and quickly roughed a hand over his eyes and mouth.

“The queen,” he gasped out, “our queen.” 

Kouyou felt horror twisting his countenance.  _ Yuu’s mother? _

The messenger shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. 

“The prince…,” he continued, carefully so upon seeing the reactions his message had evoked, “He’s locked himself away a-and there’s no … no getting through to him. That’s why...” 

“That’s why they need you,” Suzuki cut in. Sense and determination had returned into his eyes as they focused on Kouyou.

“Some Eternals react very sensitively to certain emotions,” he said hastily, “Emotions like fury or lust or grief. They can overwhelm them, to the point that they don’t know what to do with themselves and no one dares approaching them until they’ve calmed down,” he swallowed, “right now he won’t let anyone get close but you.”

Every single hair on Kouyou’s body stood at those words. Venom sizzled beneath his skin, and like a firework exploding on the inside of his head, all thoughts vanished, shot aside, repressed to the very rim of his mind. All but one.

Yuu needed him. 

“Where?” he pressed out and twirled around, but Suzuki had already picked up his bag and was holding it out to him. Kouyou snatched it out of his grasp. 

“Where is he?” 

“I-In his bedchambers,” the messenger said. 

Kouyou edged him aside with an elbow, ignoring the groan coming from him. He stumbled out onto the hallway, looked around and ran. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading everyone <3 Kudos are always appreciated and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts! Happy New Year! <3 
> 
> P.S.: Just a random tip because I noticed this when referring back to pt. 5 during writing, if you'd like to be notified by e-mail whenever I update, make sure to subscribe to the *series* [Venom] and not an individual part of it! Okay then, 'till next year! :)


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